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Wix is a top-tier website builder with a strong catalog of features, including an AI site builder enhanced SEO controls. In fact, we found that Wix is the best website builder for small businesses, due to its industry-leading design and website capabilities and smooth user experience.
On top of that, Wix’s pricing model allows users access to ecommerce functionality in virtually every plan, so you can build an online store with Wix that can handle up to 50,000 products.
Admittedly, the feature-rich software can be a bit overwhelming for businesses with simple site needs, or those new to website building. Its pricey POS integrations make it less suitable to omnichannel sellers than alternatives like Shopify, too. Fortunately, the in-depth research behind this review means you’ll learn about all the features, pricing, pros, and cons of creating a website with Wix and other website builders you need, so you can make the right decision.
Wix: Quick Fact File
Before we dive deep into what makes Wix tick, let’s get nail down some of the basics so you know exactly what kind of website builder you’re dealing with here.
- Wix has the most business features of any website builder in our research, including SEO tips, members functionality, scheduling & booking, and a robust app market.
- Wix provides an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that beginners can quickly master.
- Wix’s design process is flexible and customizable, although you can’t change your template after you’ve published your site.
- Wix offers robust, 24/7 customer support for all customers, and priority access for enterprise-level users.
- Wix pricing starts at $17 per month, but you’ll have to pay at least $29 per month for ecommerce functionality.
To find a website builder that fits your exact needs, you can always take our website builder quiz, which will give you research-backed recommendations based on your answers.
Pros
- Unrivaled selection of website features across design, sales, and support
- AI features can create site in 60 seconds
- Quality free forever plan available
Cons
- No template switching once published
- Number of features can be overwhelming for some beginners
- Steep price increase for scaling businesses with most expensive plan at $159 per month
Is Wix Right for Your Business?
If you can’t tell already, Wix is a great website builder. In fact, our research has time and time again shown that Wix is both the best website builder out there and the best free website builder for good measure. It offers an intuitive platform, a bounty of features, and excellent support options, netting the highest scores in our research across all three categories.
Truly, if you need a website builder, Wix will be a great fit. If you’re getting specific, though, there are better options out there depending on your needs. For example, Squarespace is more customizable than Wix when it comes to design, offering more templates and the ability to change themes after you’ve published. Similarly, Shopify has better ecommerce features than Wix, given its advanced features like inventory management.
Still, Wix still offers a very respectable platform when it comes to design and provides plenty of ecommerce functionality to run a successful online store. All that to say, Wix is a top tier jack-of-all-trades while still being a master of some.
Check out our Shopify and Squarespace comparison guides for more information
Editing text with Wix was easy and customizable for our team. Source: Tech.co testing
Who Should Go For Wix?
- Growing businesses with an online store – Wix offers excellent selling features on its entry-level plan, making it a great choice for small businesses selling online.
- Users building a site for the first time – Wix’s low learning curve and 24/7 help options make it ideal for users who are new to website-building software.
- Blogs and publishing sites – Wix’s blog templates, and SEO and marketing tools make it an asset to content-focused sites.
Who Shouldn’t Go For Wix?
- Users who regularly customize their site – Wix doesn’t let users swap their template or make tons of edits after their site is live, making it less suited to businesses that like to switch up the look of their site.
- Large and growing businesses – Wix is an extremely feature-rich builder, but the steep jump between its plans makes it less scalable than alternatives like Squarespace.
How Much Does Wix Cost?
On top of that, Wix is a bit expensive compared to other options, with a starting price of $17 per month, ecommerce functionality starting at $27 per month, and its most expensive plan coming in at a whopping $159 per month (although that’s admittedly an enterprise-facing plan). All that to say, there are more affordable options available, like GoDaddy and Hostinger.
On top of that, you can get 10% off all Wix plans with code TAKE10 at checkout.
Here’s a quick look at the Wix pricing plans that are currently available, as well as some basic information about each. Feel free to check out our Wix pricing guide for more in-depth information about how much it will cost your business.
Plan | Price paid annually The price per month you'll pay if you choose to be billed annually | Best for | Bandwidth | Storage | Staff accounts | Ecommerce | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Free | Light | Core | Business | Business Elite | |||
Getting started | Blog and portfolio sites | Small online stores | Large online stores | Unlimited access | |||
1GB | 3 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | |||
500MB | 2 GB | 50 GB | 100 GB | Unlimited | |||
1 | 2 | 5 | 10 | 15 | |||
| | | | |
Does Wix Have a Free Plan?
Yes, Wix has a free forever plan that allows you to create a website and get it online at no cost to you or your business. You can customize your site, update it as you see fit, and get access to a lot of basic features provided by the website builder.
However, the site comes with some serious caveats. For one, your site will be covered in Wix ads, making it decidedly less professional than the average site online. You
Additionally, you won’t have a custom URL, but a Wix-branded link that won’t look great to anyone.
Wix Review: Key Features
So what exactly makes Wix stand out compared to other providers? Here are some of the key features you get when you sign up for Wix:
Drag-and-Drop Editor
One of the features that makes Wix such an easy-to-use platform for everyday people is the drag-and-drop editor. This simple but helpful feature makes designing your website a breeze, allowing you to place elements like image galleries and text boxes anywhere in an instant. And with plenty of beautiful templates, you’ll be able to keep your site professional while giving it your own touch. Other website builders, like GoDaddy, don’t have this kind of functionality, which is why we recommend Wix over any other option.
This feature is ideal for beginners and you can check out our guide to the best website builders for beginners to learn even more.
Our Wix site is very customizable, offering lots of design options across every page. Source: Tech.co testing
Built in SEO Tools
Getting your site noticed online is key for businesses, and search engine optimization (SEO) is how you do it. With the built in SEO tools from Wix, you’ll be able to get helpful insights about how you can get your site on page one of Google. Some of the features include instant Google indexing, bulk 301 redirects, and patterned meta tags for use across multiple pages. Many website builders offer this kind of help, but it can often be found lacking, like Square Online, which has trouble with header customizability.
This tool is ideal for businesses that want to get discovered online, particularly for blogs.
Check out our guide to the best website builders for SEO to learn more
AI Features
With the evolution of AI technology like ChatGPT, Wix recently added more AI-powered features to build websites faster and better than ever. The AI Site Generator, for example, will allow you to build a website in minutes by just answering a few questions and providing some basic content.
This isn’t an uncommon feature for website builders, like GoDaddy and Squarespace, but with these AI-powered features, Wix is above and beyond the rest. This tool is also very helpful for users that are unfamiliar with business software.
Wix’s responsive AI tool makes designing your site simple too. The feature automatically identifies groups of related elements in your layouts, before adjusting them so they all look great on your page. Combine this with Wix’s powerful AI SEO tools – which include functions like an AI meta tag creator – and it’s no surprise Wix topped the list of our guide to the best AI website builders.
On top of that, Wix now offers generative AI tools that can help you write the content on your site. Just click the button in sections where you need a bit of inspiration, and the AI feature will have your site filled with helpful copy.
Getting content on our site was easy thanks to the AI text generator tool from Wix. Source: Tech.co testing
Wix Ecommerce Review: Good for Selling Online?
Until recently, Wix offered dedicated ecommerce pricing plans, which enabled users to build an online store, among other valuable tools for selling online. Now, however, ecommerce functionality is built into almost all Wix pricing plans, with basic, standard, and advanced features depending on your plan.
You’ll be able to sell up to 50,000 products with features like abandoned cart recovery, social selling, and recurring payments. You can even take advantage of drop shipping features with every single plan (except Light), although there are limits on how many products depending on your plan. Additionally, more expensive plans add features like advanced shipping, automated sales tax, loyalty programs, and product reviews. All in all, Wix offers all the stuff you need to run a solid online store.
Wix is regularly adding new sales features to its roster, too. For example, the website builder launched an Afterpay feature from Wix Payments in November 2023 that lets customers pay in installments.
Check out our guide to the best ecommerce website builders to learn more.
We found the product dashboard from Wix intuitive for keeping track of our inventory, although it could have used a bit more data. Source: Tech.co
Omni channel sellers can easily integrate their Wix website with the provider’s POS packages too. However, with prices for Wix’s POS plans starting from $550 upfront, there are lots of more affordable, pay monthly plans available.
There are some ecommerce features missing, too, which could get in the way if you’re exclusively getting a website builder to sell online. Shopify, for instance, allows you to sell unlimited products across all pricing plans. On top of that, it offers more advanced features, like inventory management, gift cards, and ecommerce automations.
Wix made selecting shipping options for our online store easy and accessible. Source: Tech.co testing
Simply put, Shopify is better equipped for ecommerce than Wix, but only if you really need the most advanced features to run your online store. Plus, Shopify pricing is a bit more expensive, and you have to endure transaction fees, which is always a bummer when selling online. You can avoid them if you use Shopify Payments, although you will still have transaction fees through third-party payment providers.
All that to say, if you’re looking to switch, make sure to consider whether these extra cost are worth those added features.
Learn more about how the builder’s sales features compare in our in-depth Shopify review.
Pros
- Robust email marketing with diverse templates, send options, and easy setup
- Outstanding shipping options
- Comprehensive mobile app to manage store on the go
Cons
- Unlimited storage only available for $159/month
- Cheapest POS is $69
- Highest transaction fees on POS
How Does Wix Compare to Other Website Builders?
We’ve said it a few times already, but it’s certainly worth reiterating: Wix is the best website builder for small businesses. Still, some website builders might be a better fit for your business if you want to save a bit of money and forego some of those advanced features.
For example, Squarespace is a popular Wix alternative, offering nearly identical pricing, a similarly easy to use platform with a drag-and-drop editor, and it allows you to change your template after your site is live, which Wix does not. On top of that, Squarespace has some of the best, most engaging templates in the industry, so you can make a good first impression.
If building an online store is more important to you, Shopify may be the way you want to go. The ecommerce website builder offers more sales features, like inventory tracking, so you can easily manage a more complex online store situation.
Take a look at how Wix compared to other providers below and check out our guide to Wix alternatives for more information:
Overall Score All Tech.co research categories, condensed into one score | Paid plan Monthly | Free Plan | Best for | Pros | Cons | Customer Score Customer and user testing testimonials. | Try it Today | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BEST OVERALL ALTERNATIVE | BEST FOR ONLINE SELLING | | |||||||
Squarespace | GoDaddy | Shopify | Hostinger | ||||||
4.7 | 4.5 | 4.2 | 4.2 | 4.0 | |||||
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Best SEO features overall | Best for mobile optimization | Best for SEO guidance | Best for unparalleled ecommerce success | Best for uptime reliability | |||||
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4.6 | 4.6 | 4.4 | 4.8 | 3.1 | |||||
Claim 10% off | Save 10% | Try GoDaddy | Try Shopify | Save up to 10% |
We take our impartial research and analysis seriously, so you can have complete confidence that we're giving you the clearest, most useful product recommendations.
After conducting an initial exploration to identify the most relevant, popular, and established tools in the market, we put them through their paces with hands-on testing to see their real strengths and weaknesses. In this case, we put 16 website builder products to the test across 398 areas of investigation.
Based on years of market and user needs research, we've established a website builder testing methodology that scores each product in six core categories of investigation and 33 subcategories; this covers everything from customer feedback to design, ease of use, and more.
Our main testing categories for website builders are:
- Website Features: the capabilities and functionalities offered by a website builder, e.g. blog functionality, SEO capability, and marketing capacity.
- Design Functionality: the aesthetic appeal and visual layout of a website created using a website builder. It encompasses aspects such as page templates and customizable themes.
- Customer Satisfaction: external customer opinion. This is the feedback and ratings given by customers who have used a particular website builder – the market position and reputation a website builder holds.
- User Experience: how user-friendly and intuitive a website builder is for people with varying levels of technical expertise.
- Value for Money: the balance between the cost of a website builder and the benefits it provides. It considers factors such as pricing plans, subscription models, and available features.
- Help and Support: the assistance and resources available to users when they encounter issues or need guidance while using a website builder.
When it comes to calculating a product's final score, not all testing areas are weighted evenly, as we know some aspects matter more to our readers than others, which are simply "nice to have." After hundreds of hours, our process is complete, and the results should ensure you can find the best solution for your needs.
At Tech.co, we have a number of full-time in-house researchers, who re-run this testing process regularly, to ensure our results remain reflective of the present day.
Verdict: Is Wix Worth It?
Wix is an excellent website builder that is definitely worth the price of admission. The platform makes updating a website easy with its drag-and-drop editor and even easier to get started thanks to the Wix ADI, which designs the page for you. On top of all that, Wix offers the most features and the best customer support in our research, making it the obvious choice for businesses of all sizes.
There are other options out there that are better for particular needs — like Squarespace for design flexibility, Shopify for ecommerce, or Hostinger for low prices. But all in all, it’s hard to do better than Wix when it comes to doing everything excellently and at a fair price.
If you want to get started with Wix, remember to use code TAKE10 to get 10% off all premium plans, and feel free to take our website builder quiz to get recommendations based on your specific needs.
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